Laudator Temporis Acti

Bernard Knox (1914-2010), Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979; rpt. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 130, with notes on p. 154:

But we must remember that for Sophocles and his contemporaries, gods and men were not judged by the same standards.³⁷ The Christian ideal, "be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect,"³⁷ would have made little or no sense to an Athenian, whose deepest religious conviction would have been most clearly expressed in opposite terms: "Do not act like a god."

37. cf. Σ on [Ajax] 79 σκληρὸν μὲν τὸ λέγειν ἐπεγγελᾶν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἀλλὰ θεός ἐστιν οὐκ εὐλαβουμένη τὸ νεμεσητόν. Lesky (Die Tragische Dichtung, p. 110) puts it well: "Die Sophrosyne ist bei Sophokles nicht Sache der Götter, die Menschen haben sie zu wahren."

38. Matthew 5:48.

Thanks to Christopher Brown for correcting a misprint and also for the following note:

Knox was clearly using an older edition of the scholia (Papageorgius?). The more recent edition by Christodoulou prints a supplemented version of that passage: σκληρὸν μὲν τὸ λέγειν <ἥδιστον τὸ> ἐπεγγελᾶν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς. He also notes that ἡδύ is another possibility (both are anonymous conjectures). The addition makes the note somewhat more pointed, I think, picking up Sophocles’ γέλως ἥδιστος. The prologue of the Ajax is an unsettling scene!